


Unfurled Petals

by nightbloomingcereus



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Aphrodisiacs, Crowley's Plants (Good Omens), Getting Together, M/M, Marathon Sex, Oral Sex, POV Crowley (Good Omens), Plants, Sex Pollen, Wings, but they're both very into it, ceiling sex, for research obviously, he'll ask for a sex pollen plant, if you give an angel an oyster, pollen ex machina, probably too many flower metaphors, questionable plant biology, sex pollen-typical lack of explicit consent, very brief mention of rimming, when plants misbehave
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-09
Updated: 2020-07-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:33:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25155535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightbloomingcereus/pseuds/nightbloomingcereus
Summary: Aziraphale is intrigued by a plant whose pollen is purported to carry aphrodisiac properties.  Crowley's never met a plant he hasn't been able to intimidate into doing his bidding.  It couldn't hurt, right?
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 62
Kudos: 330
Collections: The Good Omens Collection, The Sticky Stigma





	Unfurled Petals

**Author's Note:**

> For the GO-events discord Sex Pollen collection, only a month late. 
> 
> cw: sex pollen-typical lack of explicit consent

"Crowley, have you ever had fugu?"

"Have I ever _what?_ Angel, that seems awfully forward for you."

"Oh, for God's sake, not… _that_. _Fugu_. It's Japanese for pufferfish. They make sushi out of it. Well, sashimi, usually."

"You know I'm not one for raw fish, angel."

"This is special. The fish is poisonous to humans. It's in the liver, I think. Or the intestines. I'm not sure. Something in the viscera anyway," Aziraphale said, absently patting the ample midsection of his own corporation, which presumably contained some sort of human-approximating viscera, if only for the sake of appearance.

"Sounds dangerous. Wish I'd thought of it. Why aren't they all dead then?"

"A skilled chef, you see, can prepare it so that the poisonous bits don't taint the flesh. Terribly clever, isn't it?"

"Or terribly stupid. Why take the risk?"

"They say that the best chefs know just how much of the toxin they can leave in. It's an art. It's supposed to … tingle. On the lips. Some people say it's an aphrodisiac."

"So you've tried it, then? Is that what you were doing in Japan this past week? Chasing thrills?"

"I have, and it was."

 _I missed you, Angel_. _A week without you felt like a year._

"How was it, then? Feel anything?"

"I don't think it works on angels," Aziraphale replied, with clear disappointment. "I felt nothing, in any case. It was tasty enough, and beautifully prepared, but the _toro_ I had later in that meal was far superior, in my opinion."

"So no tingling lips for you then, angel?"

"No. Shame, really. I was so looking forward to it." Aziraphale sounded rather petulant, the corners of his mouth turned down in a small moue.

Crowley did, in point of fact, know all about _fugu_ , but he'd never tried it. (He'd never developed a taste for raw seafood, despite Aziraphale's best attempts in Rome.) It was a _temptation_ , after all, and he made a point of learning about those, if only for professional development reasons. Humans were remarkably good at fashioning temptations out of entirely untempting things (case in point: the fucking blowfish), and that made his job far easier.

He also knew a thing or two about other purportedly aphrodisiac foods, although he had his doubts about the efficacy of most of them.

"Oysters," he said, thinking aloud. "They're also supposed to be aphrodisiacs. 'S that why you like them so much, Angel?"

"Oh, hush you."

"I'm just saying. There's gotta be some reason why people keep on eating those nasty, slimy, cold things. Ugh." He shuddered.

"Sometimes I think they might be on to something, with the oysters," mused Aziraphale. "Occasionally I think I feel something… more… when I eat them. A heightened sense of love. It might have something to do with the preparation. I remember Petronius' were quite special."

Crowley made a noncommittal noise. He did not trust himself to open his mouth and speak. His mind had spun back to a memory of the last time he'd seen Aziraphale eat oysters, at the Ritz not so very long ago.

_Crowley picked up the oyster and handed it to Aziraphale. The shell was cold from the ice, its ridges slightly sharp against his fingers. Its rough surface now lay cupped within the soft flesh of Aziraphale's palm. Slowly and with fastidious precision, the angel raised it to his mouth, taking care not to let any of the precious liquid spill out. The smooth, pearly sheen of its interior pressed against his upper lip. His mouth was wet and glistening with the briny slickness of the juices. His eyelids fluttered shut in pleasure as he inhaled deeply. Crowley imagined that it would smell like the sea. It was not a smell that was at all appetizing to him, in the abstract. And yet he was picturing Aziraphale standing in the surf, barefoot and with his trousers rolled up, warm salt waves caressing his calves and splashing higher to wet his thighs, and he felt the gnawing of hunger or something very like it in the pit of his stomach._

_Aziraphale's tongue darted out from between plump, pink lips shiny with moisture to flick delicately at the tender flesh, working its way beneath the layers of slippery, gently ruffled folds around the edge. He let out a low, breathy exhale of pleasure. He tipped the shell slightly upward at its far end and parted his lips just enough to allow the oyster to slide between them into the heat of his mouth. He inhaled deeply, chewed, and swallowed, while Crowley watched over the tops of his sunglasses, his golden eyes rapt and bare._

_Crowley ached to kiss Aziraphale, yearned to taste the bright, salty-sweet tang lingering on his tongue._

"You know what," he choked out in the present, "I think you're right. Oysters. Definitely. _Definitely."_

He needed to stop thinking about oysters. He needed _Aziraphale_ to stop thinking about oysters, to stop making that blissful, half-smiling expression with his mouth. That way lay madness.

"You've heard of mad honey?"

"Of course. Xenophon wrote about it. He claimed it gave one visions."

"You know the humans say it's an aphrodisiac too?"

"I wouldn't know anything about that, I'm afraid," sniffed Aziraphale.

"Course not."

"That's much more… _your_ department, isn't it?"

"And yet _I'm_ not the one running around stuffing my mouth with oysters and blowfish at every opportunity, now am I?"

"They're _delicious_. And a testament to human ingenuity. But we were talking about mad honey. Is it really? An aphrodisiac, I mean."

"I thought you didn't care to know anything about that."

"I'm interested from a purely academic perspective, of course," said Aziraphale snippily.

"You want to try it, don't you. For _quote-unquote research_."

"It's part of my job. I can't watch over humanity properly if I don't know the details, can I? They're so bright, but when it comes to things like this, they do tend to let their imaginations, or sometimes their hormones, get the better of them."

"It's an excuse, you mean. To sin."

"Desire is not a sin, Crowley."

"Can be."

"Desire is a natural expression of love."

"It's just another way to say _lust_ and _want_."

"We'll just have to agree to disagree, then. But back to my question. Does the honey really act as an aphrodisiac?"

"Some of it does. Most of it just makes you a little high. Depends on where you get it from. There's one or two villages way up in the mountains that have access to the good stuff. The aphrodisiac bit comes from the pollen of a flower. A rare variety of rhododendron, I think. The people there say if you remove the pollen-y bits before the flower fully matures, then it's a bit like your pufferfish sushi. There's an art to the timing of it. Just enough of the immature pollen to get a rush, but not enough to have truly regrettable consequences."

"How fascinating! Have you ever tried it?"

"Not my sin of choice."

"Really? I would have thought… well, I thought— You— And temptation—"

"I only incite desire, Angel, I don't partake. Never have." He shrugged, and left unsaid the truth that the only being he would ever want to partake with was not for him, would always be too good for him.

"Well, I'd love to know what all the fuss is about," said Aziraphale.

There was a glint in his eye, a pleading, avid look that Crowley was intimately familiar with. He'd first seen it in Rome, when he'd followed Aziraphale to Petronius' for oysters, and many, many times since.

He'd never been able to say no to Aziraphale, with those puppy-dog eyes and that little pout. This was no different than making Hamlet a success or miracling the paint stain out of his coat or accompanying him for crepes in the middle of a revolution.

Aziraphale would be pleased, and grateful, and maybe a little bit high if the honey actually worked. (The pufferfish hadn't, so it was unlikely in any case. They were too far from human, their desires too different.) It was an easy enough jaunt to the mountains on the Black Sea coast, for a demon with no pressing employment. He'd be gone for a day or two at most. It couldn't hurt.

* * *

There was no honey yet, the villagers told him. It was too early in the year, and the bees had yet not had time to collect enough pollen.

He couldn't go back to Aziraphale empty-handed, couldn't bear the thought of his disappointed sigh, his dejected _oh, but I was so looking forward to it._ With the application of a judicious amount of temptation, they were convinced to tell him where the flowers grew.

The plants, when he found them, were nestled on a rocky ledge halfway up a sheer cliff face of grey stone, with its crevices and cracks still liberally caked with snow and dripping with elaborate icicle formations. It was impossible for a human to climb, but a cakewalk for a large black-and-red serpent with occult powers at his disposal. As he neared the place where they were growing, a furious buzzing noise and a wave of lust assaulted his senses. It felt like a disturbing combination of the second circle of Hell and crisp, bracing alpine atmosphere. As a serpent, he did not need to breathe, not in the human sense of inhaling air and its assorted effluvia into his lungs. Nevertheless, he could feel the waxy, sticky grains of golden pollen settling in the minute crevices where his scales overlapped one another. Even without having inhaled it, he could tell it was immensely potent. His scales felt tight and itchy and off-kilter, and the unbidden thought came to him that only Aziraphale's touch would be able to soothe them.

It was a good thing that Aziraphale was thousands of kilometers away in London.

A swarm of bees hovered around the small stand of low shrubs with waxy, dark green foliage and lush, exuberant clusters of stellate pink blossoms. They were buzzing furiously, wheeling and diving, sketching twirling barrel-rolls and ecstatic, parabolic dives in the air, in between greedily landing in the centers of the flowers. The yellow pollen clung to their legs and glistened in the thin, bright sunlight.

The air was redolent with a sweet, heady fragrance. It was a bit like night-blooming jasmine or orange blossom, but with an undertone of something faintly spicy that reminded him of Aziraphale, even though it was nothing like the angel's usual cologne.

The bees were loath to leave the flowers, even for a few minutes, but Crowley had, after far too many interactions with Beelzebub and other insect-loving demons, learned a trick or two to drive away the buzzing nuisances. Snakes, after all, sometimes ate insects, although he himself found them unpleasantly pointy and unappetizing. The insects didn't know that, though.

Once they were gone, he coerced a pair of the bushes[1] into loosening their roots from the rocky earth; this would have been an easier task in his human form, but he did not dare risk it with all of the pollen flying around. Nevertheless, a few hissed threats sufficed, and he soon had two prime specimens laying on the ground before him.

Crowley glared at them with all of the baleful force of his serpentine gaze, and threatened them with the garbage disposal. Having spent their entire lives on an isolated mountainside, the plants naturally did not know what a garbage disposal was, only that it was some sort of terrifying, eldritch abomination to be avoided at all costs. All of the opened blossoms shrank compliantly in on themselves and tightened into clenched, fearful buds, the petals folded together demurely, with their lightly striated blush-pink undersides showing. The pollen-coated stamens were locked securely inside. They looked like puckered stars, in a vaguely obscene way. The remaining plants, their roots still ensconced in earth, trembled and tried to look innocent.

Crowley smiled. He had never met a plant he couldn't intimidate into doing his bidding.

He sent the two plants, with a snap, to a pocket dimension rather than attempting to drag them back down the cliff face. It was already conveniently kitted out with everything – twelve hours of bright but not burning sunlight a day, water, soil, fertilizer, a soundtrack of Queen's Greatest Hits – that a plant needed to thrive. That turned out to be his first mistake, because this extradimensional greenhouse currently housed a number of brash, disobedient houseplants in exile from the Mayfair flat. They flaunted their yellow spots boldly, like they were award-winning blooms, and they had _ideas_ that they were only too happy to share.

Now, back in his flat, he summoned one of the bushes he'd brought back. It found itself, quite suddenly, snugly ensconced in a pretty ceramic pot with a pearly, marine iridescence. (Crowley had been thinking of oysters again when he'd imagined it into being.) He stalked around the plant in a wide, menacing circle, inspecting it critically from all directions.

"You," he growled, pointing at one particularly large and lush bunch of flowers. "You can open. But keep it in your filaments."

The flowers tentatively unfurled, one pointed petal after another, revealing a fat, greenish-yellow stigma, glistening wetly, sticking up in the center of each one. The thin, waving green stamens, which would normally be topped with bulbous pollen-dusted anthers, looked oddly like small tentacles, with what appeared to be shrunken, hollow openings at the tip. The blossoms were pleasantly fragrant, with just an enticing hint of heady musk, but not overwhelming. It was just enough lust, he judged, to inspire daydreams but not action. Just enough to gaze upon the apple and perhaps cup it covetously in one's palm, but not enough to spur anyone to take that first irreversible, doomed bite.

"Perfect. Now behave for the angel, or it's the garbage disposal for you."

He picked up the plant and headed downstairs for the Bentley and the bookshop.

* * *

Aziraphale was fascinated, and the small, pleased smile on his face was enough to spur Crowley to climb a hundred more cliff faces to bring him whatever his angelic heart desired.

"Oh, did you cut them off?"

"Nah. Seemed rather … ah … barbaric, castrating 'em like that. Just yelled at them to keep it in their filaments if they knew what was good for them."

"That's quite considerate of you, dear."

Aziraphale marveled at the flowers, at their delicate, nearly translucent pink petals, and stuck his nose into the center of one, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply of its redolence. The satisfied exhale that followed sounded like the breathy moaning sound he made when he was eating something delightful.

"Aren't you just beautiful?" he cooed, stroking a finger down a petal and touching it to the deep center of the bloom. He brought it to his lips, momentarily, to taste the sweet nectar. His smile had become radiant.

Crowley's chest ached. It was a feeling he was intimately familiar with, the sensation of his love sitting under his ribs, yearning to shape itself into words and action. He was deeply practiced in swallowing it down to mute it; he both savored and resented the pain of it.

Crowley was not the only one affected, it seemed. His second mistake, he'd realize later, was assuming that any plant would remember its marching orders when faced with the force of Aziraphale's joyful admiration, that blissful golden smile. When you thought about it that way, its reaction was nothing short of inevitable.

The anthers on the stamens popped, one after another, unfurling straight and firm out of the tubes where they had been coiled up and cowering. Crowley knew the feeling – he himself was sometimes overcome by the desire to show off for Aziraphale, to puff himself up and preen, and often felt like he would pop too, in embarrassing and obvious ways.

The rest of the flower clusters on the plant, demurely closed until that moment, followed suit, unable to resist bursting into riotous blossom, demonic threats be damned.

The familiar lovesick ache in his chest was rapidly being overtaken by wild panic, by which point it was too late. All of the anthers on all of the flowers had burst open, releasing bright, fluffy dustings of pollen and a sweet, heady scent. Aziraphale, who was closer and had gotten a faceful of it, sneezed. His pupils dilated, and his irises looked stormier and more mesmerizing than they ever had before. The air around him shimmered, a faint, hazy golden sort of glow that was part pollen and part his own ethereal luminance, unfettered by consideration for human convention.

He was looking at Crowley with the gaze of avid anticipation that he normally reserved for seven-course, five-star dinners.

Lust clouded Aziraphale’s eyes, but it was not the garden variety lust Crowley was used to, the sort that pervaded the second circle. This was softer, somehow, still full of hunger and naked need but tempered by something else. Appreciation? That wasn’t quite it, was it? Perhaps it was that Aziraphale was a connoisseur of things at heart, that he knew how to savor and draw out the experience of earthly pleasures.

And then the wavefront of the pollen hit him too, a great, heady wash of heat and desire flooding through all his synapses, and there was no more time for conjecture. He lunged forward as if someone had placed their hand square on his back and pushed, just moments after Aziraphale did the same, desperate to be touching him.

Aziraphale tore the sunglasses from Crowley's face and flung them away, somewhere to one side. Dimly he registered the clatter as they hit something, but it was irrelevant because Aziraphale was saying, his voice low, “Don’t hide from me. I want to see you. _All_ of you. You’re so beautiful. Crowley. Crowley. My beautiful Crowley.”

Their bodies came together as if drawn by a great and unstoppable magnetic force. His arms found their way around Aziraphale's waist, his mouth found its way to Aziraphale's mouth. He was suddenly harder than he'd ever been in all his long life; he could feel the heat of Aziraphale's body through the too-many layers of clothing that separated them, an answering hardness jutting into his hip. He felt like a six-thousand-year-old dam had broken and he was drowning in an ocean of need, dying for air that could only be found between Aziraphale's lips, in Aziraphale's arms. The kiss, their first, was desperate, wet and open-mouthed and hungry, tongues and lips tangling together without technique or finesse.

One of them snapped, or perhaps both of them did at once. Several miracles occurred simultaneously. A large pile of luxuriously fluffy white pillows materialized on the circular rug in the center of the bookshop, under the skylight. Aziraphale's clothing suddenly found itself several feet to the left, in a neatly folded stack on a chair. Crowley's outfit vanished back into the ether from whence it had come. Whether these events were demonic or angelic in origin was not a question either currently had the wherewithal to ask. Crowley's brain was too busy short-circuiting at the sudden expanse of Aziraphale's bare chest in contact with his, the soft give of Aziraphale's waist under his fingers where before there had been loose layers of fabric. He let his hand drift down and behind to the fleshy crease between Aziraphale's bottom and thighs, cupping the plump, rounded contours of the angel's ass in his palms. Aziraphale's eyes were blown very wide and very blue, and his mouth was slightly open. He let out a breathy gasp.

When Aziraphale touched Crowley for the first time, pulling a single finger slowly along his aching, hard length, swirling his thumb against the tip and smearing the bead of wetness that had formed there, there was a nearly unbearable, glorious burst of sensation and a moment of startling clarity. It was as if the cloud of pollen had lifted for a moment, leaving behind something bright and sharp and glorious that transcended the simplicity of pure lust. It went straight to the core of him, and he felt something inside him go molten even as yet more blood pooled in his cock. It was sharper, and more rarefied, and equally, if not more, hungry. It was six thousand years old. He couldn’t fight it. He didn’t want to.

Even through the lust haze of the pollen, Aziraphale took his time, laying Crowley out on the decadent spill of pillows on the floor, spreading his thighs apart with two broad, warm hands, trailing a finger slowly down his perineum and around the ring of his anus, slowly pushing in one miraculously slick finger and then a second, and eventually a third. Crowley lay breathlessly awash in feeling, his every nerve ending alight. The slow, slow drag of the slight callouses on Aziraphale's hands against the most sensitive parts of Crowley's corporation. The blunt pressure of a fingertip breaching the tight, puckered muscles at his entrance. The hard bulge of a knuckle bumping up against the bright sensitivity of his prostate. It was shocking how tender such strange and foreign acts could be. It should have felt like an invasion, but instead it felt like an invitation. And it was not shocking at all, because it was Aziraphale, and Crowley loved him, had loved him almost from the moment they'd met for his compassion and his wonder, and there was no way he could be anything but perfect and patient and tender.

He caught occasional glimpses of Aziraphale's face, from where he knelt between Crowley's spread knees. He looked beatific with his flushed face and mussed curls, as if he had glimpsed something far more wondrous and more rarefied than the mundanity of heaven. He had a look of mingled joy and hunger and lust on his face, and the sight of it sent a straight shot of pleasure to Crowley's core, intensifying the sensation that Aziraphale was eliciting with the rhythmic dip and lift of his fingers, going a bit deeper each time.

Aziraphale bent his golden head to place a kiss on the tip of Crowley's cock. His lips were cool and smooth, and his tongue, when he darted it out to taste the drop of fluid at the tip, warm and slick. In all his dreams, thought Crowley in a daze, he had never dared imagined anything as erotic, as filthily wanton, as the sight of Aziraphale with his plush lips slowly slipping down over the head, and then the shaft, of his cock. It was wet, and very warm, and his tongue exerted an exquisite pressure against the sensitive underside. His mouth was fuller than Crowley had ever seen it before, greedy and pink. Small, blissful moans came from his throat and vibrated against the tip of Crowley's cock. Crowley was powerless to stop the rhythmic cant and tip of his hips toward Aziraphale's mouth, just as he was powerless to stop the wanton sounds pouring from his own throat.

A great whoosh and a sudden movement of the air heralded the abrupt appearance of Aziraphale's wings. There was the barest tickle of feathers where they brushed against the over-sensitive skin of Crowley's hip and side; this was enough to cause his own wings to pop, sleek and black, from the ether, just as he arched his back in pleasure. The sudden appearance of his wings propelled him upward into a sitting position, and he slipped from Aziraphale's mouth in a long, slippery slide. He had a moment to regret the sudden chill of the air against the sensitive, wet skin, but then Aziraphale was kissing him, and lifting his white wings up to mantle them both. The tips of his pinions brushed against the skin of Crowley's neck, and it was nearly as intimate a feeling as that of his mouth on untouched skin.

Aziraphale's arms came around to hold him, strong and sturdy, and he spread his wings and pumped them once, twice; the powerful muscles in his back, under Crowley's hands, gathered and rippled. And then they were rising, soaring up into the air in the open center of the bookshop, up, up, up, above the spill of yellow lamplight where they had just been, past the shadowed sweep of the spiral staircase, beyond the ringed shelves of books on the second level, to the wide glass-and-iron oculus overhead.

The top of Crowley's head was nearly touching the apex of the dome when Aziraphale suddenly brought his wings inward and back and dipped them both bodily backwards so that they were more or less parallel with the ceiling. He flipped Crowley around in his arms without warning, so that he had a view of the oculus above, the eight dark metal ribs radiating from a center point. The bars, Aziraphale had told him once, were set along the points of the compass rose; it was the eastern one that lay above him now. He was very close to the ceiling; he raised his arm, slightly, and felt the slip of the glass and the scrape of the iron against his upturned palm.

He was splayed out and open and vulnerable and trusting, the bare skin of his chest and stomach and groin pressed against the curved glass panels and wrought iron spines of the dome. He had a full view of the night sky, moonless and full of stars. He imagined what someone passing by in the sky overhead would see if they looked down: their two bodies under glass, locked in an embrace, two pairs of wings unfurled across the compass rose like petals on a flower, dark and light interleaved. The cold, rough ridge of the metal crossbeam should have been unpleasant where his painfully erect cock was pressed up against it, but somehow it was the exact opposite, an exquisite and utterly novel pleasure. Aziraphale was pressed up against him from behind, his mouth hot against the nape of Crowley's neck, the soft fullness of his belly laid out warm across the small of Crowley's back, his hands spread out across the flats of Crowley's scapulae. His palms were directly over the sensitive spot right where wings became skin, and their warm pressure bolstered Crowley and kept him from falling.

The head of Aziraphale's cock nudged between his buttocks, slipping against the sensitive edges of his open, slick hole. He moaned, fogging the glass in front of his face, and pushed his hips back into Aziraphale's, chasing the press of that tantalizing, blunt tip at his entrance. And then Aziraphale was pushing himself in, immense and hard and unyielding and so, so warm. There was a moment of resistance, all of his muscles clenching taut, and then Aziraphale was slipping past the tightness and all the way in. The thought that he was _filled_ to the hilt, stretched as far as he would go around _Aziraphale_ , who was _inside_ him, hit Crowley's senses like a tidal wave, and he abandoned himself to sensation, arching his back and rocking his hips. His motions were erratic and wild, yet somehow Aziraphale found his rhythm and matched it with the snap of his hips and the beat of his wings. The head of Aziraphale's cock dragged, both merciless and astonishingly pleasurable, against his prostate with every thrust. Aziraphale held him fast against the glass, thrusting upward into him both with the strength of his hip muscles and the buoyant pumping of his wings below them. Crowley's own wings were spread wide and open to their full wingspan, nearly touching the ornamented edges of the dome. They were effectively pinioned by the hard press of Aziraphale's hands against his back, and he'd never felt safer and more precious. They were creatures of flesh and feathers and naked desire, and gravity and the laws of physics had no hold on them.

He wondered, wildly, whether the glass of the oculus would hold, or whether it would shatter around them, in a shower of sparkling crystal shards. He tried to convey this thought to Aziraphale, but it came out as a garbled, unintelligible mess of words and hissy gasps, punctuated by some helpless flailing of his hand against the glass.

Aziraphale couldn't possibly have understood what Crowley was trying to say, but, nevertheless, he gave a particularly forceful thrust against Crowley's backside, smashing him up against the glass. It held, and did not break.

Crowley arched his back, pushing himself up into the curvature of the dome, clenching around the fullness of Aziraphale inside of him. Sounds spilled from his mouth, a ragged combination of consonants and hisses and repeated utterances of Aziraphale's name, a symphony of the love that been gathering to a breaking point for millennia.

It was a study in contrasts. The cold of the glass against the heat of their flushed bodies. The hardness of the metal bars across his front against the yielding, ample softness of Aziraphale’s belly against his back. The remoteness of the stars, so very far away and long ago, against the intoxicating nearness of Aziraphale, his breath against his neck, his palms against his skin, his cock buried deep inside him.

Aziraphale was already sheathed inside him right down to his base, and still Crowley was greedy for more of him, for all of him, for as much of him as he would give. With every increasingly hard thrust Aziraphale made behind him, his own cock slipped across the slick glass and rubbed up against the textured metal bars of the skylight. The stars in his vision expanded, eclipsing the real, distant ones overhead, and exploded in a burst of white-hot sensation into blinding, crystalline shards of light. It was vast and beautiful. He came, hard, bucking his hips wildly up against the skylight, splattering milky, viscous semen across the glass and his own stomach, with a high, keening cry.

"Aziraphale!" he cried, nearly weeping with the beauty and release of it. "I love you. I love you. _I love you."_

Whether it was the confession or the purely physical, almost violent clench and release of his muscles around Aziraphale's cock, he didn't know, but something was enough to pull the angel's own orgasm out of him with one final powerful, deep thrust and a long, rapturous keening gasp, his broad hands clutching bruises into Crowley's shoulders.

They floated, limp and boneless in the afterglow, slowly down from the ceiling. It was not like falling, not at all, but a gentle downward drift with the barest tug of gravity, soft as dandelion fluff on the breeze. Aziraphale had his arms around him, his wings cradling them both, as they slowly spun down into the circle of golden lamplight below.

The heady rush of the pollen was still in his lungs, its sweetness on his tongue, and even as they landed among and pillows in a puff of feathers, he felt himself growing hard again. They were still skin to skin, feather to feather, a tangle of wings and sweat-sticky bodies.

Everything was a fever dream, a mess of limbs and feathers and sensation. He did not know where Aziraphale ended or he began, and how many points they were joined at.

He discovered the taste of Aziraphale, the salt and the musk and the heat of him, how his most soft and secret places opened like a flower to the gentle pressure of the point of his tongue, how he cried out in ragged pleasure when Crowley flicked his tongue just so, just like that, and again, and _again again again don't stop Crowley please don't stop._

He was inside Aziraphale, and their mouths were locked together, their tongues entwined. He felt Aziraphale come, felt his internal muscles clench and release around his pulsing cock, felt the tightening of the iron grip of strong thighs around his waist.

He learned the intimate shapes of Aziraphale's fingers, his mouth, his cock, his hole, and how they slotted into and around him like they were made to fit together. The way the white-gold curls tangled in his hands. The taste of his sweat and his spend on his skin. The face scrunched up in blind pleasure, the bared, pale, arched expanse of his neck, when he came. The way that Crowley's own name sounded, breathless, gasping, wondrous, in combination with a word that sounded very much like it might be _love_.

The only limits were the limits of their own imaginations and the limits of their own inhibitions. Neither existed just then. They came, and came, and came again, as stars rose and set in the night sky outside. They were limitless, and infinite, and one.

Sometime in the early morning, when the sky was just beginning to lighten into a luminous orange along the eastern rooftops, the haze of pollen began to lighten. Sudden clarity hit Crowley in the wake of yet another orgasm (he’d stopped counting long ago, around when Aziraphale did something with his mouth that rendered him unable to remember his own name, much less what numbers were or how to use them) like a cold North Sea wave in the face. It felt like a particularly harsh sobering-up, only worse, because instead of a fleeting stab of pain and a nasty taste in the mouth, there was a dense, heavy ball of dread in his stomach like a lead balloon. This was it, then. Aziraphale would come to his senses and recoil in horror at what he'd done and who he'd done it with. Crowley's best hope would be to blame the pollen for their loss of control, insist it meant nothing, and swallow his love and the memories of the night down, even deeper than it had been before; perhaps he would slink back to his flat and sleep, and, if he was lucky, Aziraphale might have forgiven him when he woke up a hundred years from now.

He allowed himself to gaze upon Aziraphale's face, soft and wrecked with pleasure, framed with tangled white-gold curls, for one last time. Aziraphale opened his eyes. Crowley watched the focus slide sharply back into them: piercing, hard edged stabs of silver amidst the roiling blue. He took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and waited for the guillotine to fall.

"Crowley," Aziraphale said, and there was no horror in his voice. Instead, there was wonderment, and what sounded, inexplicably, like a quiet, incredulous joy. "Did you mean it?"

His eyes flew open. Aziraphale was looking back at him, eyes wide.

"Did I mean what?"

"What you said, up there." Aziraphale's eyes drifted up to the oculus, where the sky was turning a glittering sunrise orange. If he squinted, Crowley could make out a pale, splattered stain across one of the curved wedges of glass there.

"When you came," Aziraphale continued, almost shyly, "you said you loved me."

He was still there, warm and solid and a little bit sticky, smelling of sex and of _Crowley_ , in the circle of his arms, and was making no moves to escape, and that made Crowley brave enough to unfurl the petals wrapped around his heart and lay it out, open and bare, for his angel.

"I did. And I do. I love you. Oh, Angel. I think I've loved you since the moment we met."

"Oh, thank Someone. Crowley. Crowley, my dearest. I'm so _glad._ I love you too. I love you so much."

And there was that smile again, that joyful, radiant thing that he would go to the ends of the earth for, blooming across Aziraphale's face.

He sighed contentedly and curled himself around Crowley, in a manner that suggested that he had picked up more than just the art of temptation from the Serpent of Eden during their long acquaintance. Crowley lay back and watched dust motes dance, languid and sparkling, in the orange sunrise light angling through the oculus above them. An idle thought came to him, randomly, from the night before.

"Angel. Should we have been worried at all? That the glass would break? Pretty sure whoever built this place wasn't expecting the skylight to be used for that. Fucking. You buggering me against the glass."

"For making love, you mean?"

 _Making love._ The term was sweet, and maudlin, and old-fashioned. He couldn't help but make a small noise of pleased agreement.

"It's lead glass, darling. They don't make it like they used to," said Aziraphale indulgently. "Besides, I think Adam made it indestructible when he restored the bookshop. We could test out that conjecture more fully next time."

" _Next time_?"

"Only if you'd like, dear. I don't mean to presume."

"Of course I'd like," he protested. "I just didn't think _you'd_ like."

"You never listen, you ridiculous serpent," said Aziraphale fondly. "It's like I told you. Desire is a natural part of love. And I should like nothing more than for there to be a next time, and a time after that, and after that, and so on."

Aziraphale kissed him. It was not their first kiss – that had been several hours, and any number of other acts, earlier – but it was their first without the influence of the pollen. It was slow, and sweet, and close-mouthed, just a gentle press of lips to lips, and it was a promise.

Crowley thought about the way the stars had exploded in his vision like bright flowers when he came, the way Aziraphale had caressed him with such gentleness and such care, even with his inhibitions removed by the pollen haze. _A natural part of love._ The lead balloon, suddenly lighter than air, blew away and vanished with a thought. In its wake, a wave of exhaustion swept in, now that the pollen and the dread were gone. It was heavy and satisfying as any afterglow. He felt like he had been shattered and put together more times than he could count, each time more devastating and more wondrous than the last. They slept, where they were, encircled in each other's arms, in a nest of pillows on the floor in the center of the bookshop, as sunlight spilled all around them.

* * *

When they awoke, the sunbeams through the skylight had become a warm, slanted late-afternoon gold. Aziraphale stumbled blearily to his small kitchenette and emerged several minutes later with two steaming mugs of tea. Crowley would have offered to help, except he could not tear himself away from the utterly delightful sight that was Aziraphale wandering around his bookshop in all his naked glory. On his way back to their haven of pillows, Aziraphale snapped his fingers to miracle everything clean and sorted and dry. All except for the whitish smudge across the oculus glass, which he left untouched; he intended for it to always remain there, he told Crowley later, so long as one knew where to look.

The plant that had started everything was still sitting on the table, its lush blossoms now demurely furled together and drooping downward as if in exhausted slumber[2]. The air was clear, with only the barest hint of a slightly sweet, pleasant fragrance.

"We should find somewhere to put this thing. I don't think it's a good idea to keep it here in the shop."

"Yeah, it wouldn't exactly _scare_ away your customers. They'd probably keep coming back."

"Perhaps you could take it back to your flat?"

"Can't have the other plants getting _ideas._ Next thing you know, pollen city. I'm not running a brothel over there. Upstairs? You've got a flat up there, right?"

"I do. It's a bit of a mess though, I'm afraid. I've rarely had reason to use it. But I thought we might start by relocating these pillows up there. Get a bed. You should choose one. If you like."

"We could put this guy up there. It might be fun."

"We don't need the plant for that, dear," said Aziraphale, and proceeded to derail the conversation by showing Crowley exactly what he meant in great and delicious detail. It was nearly an hour later when they returned to tackling the problem at hand.

"Perhaps the shop next door would like it. It would be good for their business."

"Or…" Crowley smiled, wickedly. "I know just the place."

* * *

The following afternoon, two men, or man-shaped beings, strolled into the lobby of a sleek and anonymous office building in the City of London. One was thin and slouchy, the other stout and straight-backed, and both were dressed in official-looking, orange-striped, high-visibility jackets, the kind that everyone can see clearly but nobody really takes note of. They were carrying a large, heavy-looking planter between them, and so it could be safely assumed that they were there to perform routine maintenance and improvements on the uninspired, ubiquitous lobby decor.

They were both limping a little. Neither of them needed to be, of course, but they both liked the subtle reminder, the way the twinge and the dull ache evoked flushed memories of the night before. Along much the same lines, one of them bore a pair of spectacular bruises on the apexes of his hipbones where he'd hit the skylight and the other a deep purple mark that looked remarkably like a demon's mouth on his collarbone.

They were not, needless to say, from the office decor company. The lobby of the Heaven and Hell office building was filled with a variety of greenery, most of it fake. It was something that had always irritated Crowley to no end, because the plastic ficus trees and soulless silk flower arrangements never responded to his bullying.

The verdant rhododendron plant, freshly installed in a trendy, vaguely geometric, unobjectionable pale grey concrete planter, looked perfectly at home on its new pedestal in front of the escalators. The foliage was lush and green, and it was graced with a profusion of beautiful, fragrant, blush-pink blooms year-round. It had been given carte blanche by Crowley to do as it liked, whenever it liked, so long as it behaved on the drive over from Soho. (It had been a model of obedience; even lusty, wayward plants knew better than to contravene Crowley's ironclad rule about not messing up his precious Bentley.) It had been specifically informed that a certain demon prince was generally attended by flies that would enjoy drinking of its nectar, and that a certain vain Archangel might find the aesthetic perfection of a single pristine blossom in his lapel irresistible.

If plants could be said to smile, this one was smiling. It was proud of its accomplishments, and was looking forward to many, many more.

* * *

[1]Ever since the debacle with the unicorn at the Ark, he'd always tried to pick up a spare, just in case.return to text

[2]Hey, you try watching two man-shaped beings fucking each other into the ground (or the ceiling, for that matter) for eight hours straight. At least most humans had the decency to have refractory periods and/or physical limitations on stamina. If the plant hadn't reached the end of its metaphorical leash and decided to just give up and take a well-deserved, long nap, the angel and the demon would probably still be going at it.return to text

**Author's Note:**

> You can [reblog this here on tumblr](https://moondawntreader.tumblr.com/post/623120336471392256/unfurled-petals-by-nightbloomingcereus-part) if you like.


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